Multimedia streaming services have helped drive the evolution of new mobile broadband technologies and standards, since digital video content is increasingly consumed on mobile devices. Many video streaming applications are frequently used on mobile devices for entertainment, communication, and other purposes. For example, online video streaming is offered by popular services such as YouTube™, Hulu™, Netflix™, Amazon Instant Video™, WatchESPN™, and others. In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion global views. Ten percent of those views were accessed via mobile phones or tablets. As more smart phones, tablets, and other mobile computing devices are purchased, media servers will face increasingly heavy loads of streaming requests from multiple client devices. With such high consumer demand for multimedia services coupled with developments in media compression and wireless network infrastructures, it is of interest to enhance the multimedia service capabilities of future cellular and mobile broadband systems and deliver high quality of experience (QoE) to the consumers, thereby ensuring ubiquitous access to video content and services from any location, at any time, with any device and technology.
Reference will now be made to the exemplary embodiments illustrated, and specific language will be used herein to describe the same. It will nevertheless be understood that no limitation of the scope of the invention is thereby intended.